Honey-Sesame Broccoli Salad

July 3, 2015

Honey-sesame broccoli salad is a break from traditional mayonnaise-based broccoli salad. It’s light and just a little sweet, and it’s perfect for a summer meal!
I love broccoli salad. It’s a food I didn’t grow up with…I discovered it, randomly, in a gardening book that we bought several years back. Over the years, I’ve tweaked it several times until I arrived at my perfect broccoli salad recipe, but one thing is for sure…we make broccoli salad several times every summer. No cooking (unless bacon is involved), just some chopping and stirring. It doesn’t heat up the house, which is a plus in these crazy hot days we’ve been having this summer (still not complaining, though I would be complaining if my power bill went up!).
There’s one problem with my usual broccoli salad, though…there’s an awful lot of mayo and bacon in it. And gah, I love mayo and bacon, but since just about all of my meals involve something that I’m making for the blog (since we love leftovers), I’ve realized lately that my style of eating was a little off balance. How did I know? Because my.pants.don’t.fit. This is a problem. So, I’ve been working on easing up on the mayonnaise, bacon, butter, and cheese. They’re still here…that will never change. But maybe a little bit less of them? And less of the biscuits too, as much as that pains me. I believe in all foods in moderation…but I haven’t really been practicing moderation lately, and given my new, less active job, that hasn’t really stacked the odds in my favor, even with brutal HIIT workouts and lots of weight training.
It’s really okay, though, because if balance means getting to eat delicious foods like this honey-sesame broccoli salad I’m not going to cry. It’s still got sweet, from the honey and the cranberries, and it’s still got fat, from the sesame oil, cashews, and sesame seeds. But this broccoli salad is a lot less heavy than the “usual suspect” and, yes, it does have a decent amount less fat and fewer calories (by the way, I am not a low-fat fan, but I do think that you should balance the amount of carbs, protein, and fats that you eat, and my traditional broccoli salad definitely tips the scale in the fat direction…as Cookie Monster would say, it’s a “sometimes food“). No one will feel deprived eating this honey-sesame broccoli salad, and it’s perfect for a picnic, cookout, or just a Tuesday…and it’s perfect for packing in lunch boxes too!

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[…] cheese with crackers for dipping. That was followed by bacon and cheese party sandwiches with honey-sesame broccoli salad, and we finished the meal off with my fluffy banana pudding. I think everyone was pretty happy with […]